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Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#11

Post by dangrossman »

mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

Yes, it's actually a White House talking point this week: "Since February 2010, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added roughly 500,000 jobs, the fastest pace of job growth in the sector since 1995".

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#12

Post by kokey »

robotmay wrote: post #10
freehunter wrote: post #3

Hopefully this brings more control over the production by the RPi team. If something is going wrong, it's a lot easier to take a trip down the M4 (or the train) than it is to fly to China and sort things out.

I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on the M4 ;)

That's not a problem, if you drive on it at 2am.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#13

Post by kokey »

dangrossman wrote: post #11
mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

Yes, it's actually a White House talking point this week: "Since February 2010, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added roughly 500,000 jobs, the fastest pace of job growth in the sector since 1995".

I think there has been a general recognition that rebuilding local supply chain in manufacturing is essential. Especially in the industries where this is still possible.

Cheap labour only helps if two years of labour is cheaper than a machine that can do the work. The machines get cheaper and labour gets more expensive. It obviously doesn't mean a lot of the low skilled jobs are ever going to return to the countries they have left, but at least it creates opportunity for an ecosystem of local suppliers and innovation.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#14

Post by bane »

With all of the manufacturing issues the RPi team has had, I can't help but think what a tremendous PIA building something reasonably sophisticated is.

Kudos to the team for taking on such a difficult and worthwhile project and putting up with all of the issues. Even if the RPi in and of itself isn't successful, it's definitely brought these kinds of small, cheap simply computers to the forefront of many minds and that's a good thing.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#15

Post by joshuahedlund »

mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

Yes, Google "reshoring" for a number of news articles and opinion pieces about how it's happening to some degree and how big of a deal it may or may not be.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#17

Post by lgeek »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #4

This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infac…

I think at some point they've said that there are some import taxes for components but none for assembled devices.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#18

Post by pnathan »

mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

My employer manufactures high-end electronic goods in the US with a full manufacturing floor. We succeed in part because of aggressive attention to detail, exacting automation and constant improvement.

It also helps that we're not in a price race to the bottom.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#19

Post by oliwarner »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #4

This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infac…

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes.

China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency.

I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often more money than it would be to have them fab the whole thing in the first place.

I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#20

Post by Zenst »

Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one.

Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are:

1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local resource.

2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to address.

But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence.

This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about. Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any plans or projects along those lines?

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